


Forty-Eight Meters

by Arsenic



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-11
Updated: 2006-09-11
Packaged: 2020-07-11 00:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19915243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/Arsenic
Summary: Challenge: Lighthouse, Draco/Ron





	Forty-Eight Meters

**Author's Note:**

> Written for hpshortfics. Takes place in OoM-verse.

Occasionally--all right, not so occasionally--Ron will manage to out-Muggle even Draco. Draco has lived without his magic for nearly seventeen years, Ron spelling his way through every last one of them. It is still Ron who delights in the world of Muggle invention.

Perhaps this is not as surprising as Draco sometimes gets to thinking. Draco's world depends on those innovations. To Ron, they are still novelties.

It would make Draco bitter, hurtful, venomous, except that Ron treats his world with even more wonder than Draco has been forced to treat Ron's. Ron treats Draco's world with only slightly less wonder than he treats Draco himself, and Draco knows the rarity of being valued.

So when Ron says, "You _have_ to see this!" Draco is never surprised when "this" turns out to be nothing more than the timer function on the oven, or the cruise control on the Mini, or the way Draco's iPod requires nothing more than a touch to play music. He's never disappointed, either.

But if Ron's obsession with all that is Muggle is mostly just another facet of his personality, it is--on certain occasions--part of what makes him the very best boyfriend in all the wide world. (Draco does not tell him this, of course. Ron Weasley is enough to deal with as he is. Ron Weasley being encouraged is. . . Draco has had to keep Maddy and Addy from quitting more than a few times. They would come back, but it's just easier not to have to renew the contract.)

On their tenth anniversary, Ron has one of his moments. He steals the car keys from Draco, finally having learned how to drive less than two years earlier, and takes them down the coast. It is perfect just then anyway, the two of them in the car, nothing between them but memories, nothing in front of them but road.

By nightfall there is something ahead of them, something that Draco has seen in pictures and films, but never in front of him, guiding him over reef and shoal. He is in a car now, so it is not technically performing that service for him at the moment either, but Draco can be metaphorical. He can even be poetical. It's his tenth anniversary, he deserves a little bit of poetry. Or a lighthouse, evidently, which is what his boyfriend has gotten him.

Well, not the lighthouse itself. Ron is talking a mile a minute, the kind of talk where Draco has to listen for key words and hope that the picture of what he is actually saying forms itself in Draco's head. He catches on to the fact that Ron is telling him what the lighthouse does, how it does what it does, and that Nell evidently met the guy who performs monthly maintenance on the place through one of her art projects and got him to loan her the keys for a night.

They will be lights upon the shore.

Or something.

*

The stairs spiral upward forever and ever, but Ron is at Draco's back and Draco has nowhere to go but skyward. Even at the dizzying height where Draco's hands find railing and there is nothing but air and mist and salt around him, even there it smells of the forever that the ocean offers. Draco loves the ocean. It never seems to go back on its promises, not even the terrifying ones.

The sweep of the light is slower than Draco would have thought, slower than it seemed on film. The heat of the beacon sweeps over his back, an intangible furl of safety. Ron says, "The lens is made out of erm, Fres- Fern-, well, it was developed strictly for lighthouses."

Draco doesn't really care, not at all, but he likes the way Ron sounds when he's unsure and enthusiastic. Draco kisses the sound from his tongue.

Ron mutters, "Pretty high up here, mate."

"You can do magic," Draco reminds him.

"Well, yeah, but. Sort of embarrassing, really, to fall off a tower where I brought you on our anniversary."

So Draco pushes Ron against the casing for the light and Ron squeals, "Ow," before remembering that he does, indeed, do magic, and casting a warding spell to protect himself from the heat.

After that, he has no complaints.

*

Draco drives them home, because Ron is still riding the wave of satisfaction that Draco caught with the incoming tide and gave over to him, and also, it is dark and Ron sometimes forgets to turn on the headlights.

The sweep of incandescent white catches the car for miles and miles and miles, long enough that Draco thinks that incandescent yellow and morning will greet them on the other side, but it is still dark when he pulls into the garage. The garage smells of French toast.

Ron says, "I _love_ French toast!"

Draco says, "Happy anniversary," feeling a bit lame despite the fact that he has other surprises planned. It's hard to outdo particularly good sex forty eight meters above ground.

Ron misses the point, leaning over to kiss him with a, "Yes, yes, I love you more," but he clearly doesn't, because the kiss is a short thing, made so in order for him to race to the door and take advantage of their house elves.

Draco follows. Maddy will have made the blueberry topping that he loves, despite the fact that he didn't ask her for it, only the strawberry one to which Ron is partial. Ron will kiss him at some point--really kiss him--when he connects the fact that all the meals are his favorites with the fact that Draco is anal about details.

He will taste of cinnamon and syrup and, underneath it all, the last vestiges of air liberally seasoned with salt.

Draco will wish him a happy anniversary again, and Ron will kiss him some more.


End file.
